On Patrol...

It's the police.

Hello again, all!
I was watching late night TV the other night, and came
across the show 'COPS', where a TV crew rides with the police and
records what the officers do during that time. This got me to
wondering if there wasn't some way for Sunday Funnies to do more
or less the same thing. After all, it seems only fair. We've
done funny criminals a few times...
Lots of thanks to go out this week! Thanks to: Cheong Chu-
Ling, Peter Adler, Dick Ginkowski, Dale Frederickson, Howard
Lesniak, Hong Li, Bob Martens, and Beth Butler. I always
appreciate the material you folks send. OK, now we're off to the
donut shop for funny police stories...
Have a great week!

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REALITY CHECK DEPARTMENT...
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Ever wonder what the police REALLY do all day? Maybe it's
more like television police shows in the big cities, but over
most of the US, the great majority of calls are minor things.
That's especially true for small town and rural police
departments.
These are from the Brown County (Indiana) Sheriff's
Department official telephone log for a typical weekend...
----------------------------
- Man on Bellsville Road reported someone has knocked down his
mailbox and then came back and ran over it again.
- 11:14pm Man reports suspicious vehicle on Butler Road.
- 11:34pm Deputy reports vehicle had a couple of "lovers" in
it. They were advised to pull the car off the road.
- Man has found a couch hidden behind a wood pile.
- Woman's washing machine has overheated. Woman's unplugged
it, but it is still smoking.
- Man is coming out of a man hole.
- Person calls to ask if it is raining.
- Man reports the covered bridge in Bean Blossom didn't feel
right when he drove over it. County highway is advised to
check.
- Someone reports nude swimmers at Pikes Peak--two cars
dispatched.
[ One to take pictures? ]
- Trouble reported at the county dump. Someone abandoned a
person there.
- Woman phones that she has "found a bull."
- Man wanted to know if he could burn his house down. Was
advised to talk to the fire department.
- Man complains on phone of noise pollution from helicopter.
He said sheriff department should stop the helicopter.
- Someone on phone said, "I'd like to report a fire" and then
hung up.
- 2:20pm Woman on 135 north suspects radiator may have been
stolen from auto.
- 2:47pm Deputy reports radiator not stolen; woman was
confused because radiator was not behind grill on transverse
[i.e. sideways] engine.
- Man wants to know if sheriff would like to come watch his
snakes eat.
- Woman requests a deputy--her pussycat is sick and will not
come out from under the bed. Deputy enroute.
- Cattle are out; Sheriff enroute to help round up the herd.
- Man advises there may be domestic trouble soon at his home.
- 6:41pm Woman on Three Notch Road phones that she
accidentally grazed her husband while shooting hogs.
- 6:51pm Woman phones again to advise disregard earlier phone
call. Says her husband received only a couple of small
scratches on his chest from ricocheting shotgun pellets.
- Monroe County said a woman wanted us to be on the look out
for her husband who is drunk. She said she was worried
about the car.
- Man reports he will be burning his sister's barn on Valley
Branch Road.
- Woman reports her husband may report his car stolen but she
has it and he knows it.
- A grouse flew through a window on Helmsburg Road setting off
a burglar alarm, and cat ate the grouse.
- Woman on Artist Drive reported small animals in their
chimney.
- 9:13am Eleven cows missing since last night on Green Valley
Road.
- 9:42am Disregard on missing cows. They have come home.
Woman at Fruitdale complains that neighbor's dogs won't let
her go to mailbox.
- Man from Gnaw Bone advises that two unauthorized cows are on
his property.
- Woman reports she found a dead dog in her bed. Deputy
investigates.
- 9:01am Cow is tearing up golf course.
- 4:20pm Man who reported cow tearing up golf course reports
a herd of cattle is now on the golf course.
- Woman reports car heading north from Stonehead. Two
"scroungy" male subjects are in the vehicle driving very
slowly. Also had a "tent-like affair" inside of car.
- Prisoner released to the custody of father to register for
college.
- Woman reported a party going on at Helmsburg with a bunch of
kids and that one girl is parading around in her nighty with
a beer in her hand.
- Man requests deputy to tell his wife he has two buildings on
fire and doesn't know when he will be home.
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PICTURE THIS DEPARTMENT...
-----------------------
From Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle:
A motorist was unknowingly caught in one of those automated
speed traps that measured his speed using radar and took a photo
of his car. He later received in the mail a ticket for $40, and
a photo of him driving his car. Instead of payment, he sent the
police department a photograph of $40. Several days later, he
received a letter from the police department that contained
another picture - of handcuffs.
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IN A RAFT OF TROUBLE DEPARTMENT...
Jerry298@austin.relay.ucm.org swears this really happened to
him...
The story starts really simply... A 17 year old named Jerry
got a military surplus emergency raft - one of the big ones that
holds up to 10 people. Of course, he couldn't wait to test it,
so he loaded the raft into his car, along with his friend, Jason
and their girlfriends. Since his car was a Volkswagen, this was
quite a trick in itself and the girls had to share the back seat
with the raft.
It was a hot summers day, so they had most of the windows
open on the VW. And in the wind, there was this little red tag
that kept getting tangled in one of the girl's hair, until she
got so upset she yanked the tag off, intending to throw it out
the window.
Of course, that tag was the safety warning on the valve that
inflated the raft.
"It takes about 15 seconds for one of those things to
inflate," Jerry said later, "and for the first 5 seconds or so I
was frozen with something of a mixture fear, amazement, and a
sense of this really can't be happening! In the 6th second the
raft started pushing my head down against the steering wheel hard
enough that I couldn't really see where I was going."
The inflating raft pushed so tightly inside the VW that it
started to pop out the windows, and with the girls screaming and
the siren of the police car behind them going, it was a wild
ride. But Jerry managed to keep the car under enough control to
get it off to the side of the road reasonably safely.
"I got hold of the door handle to open the door and pulled.
The door shot open, and the raft exploded out of the car pushing
me ahead of it. When I got to my feet, the first thing I saw was
the Oklahoma Highway Patrol cop laughing so hard he had tears
running down his cheeks, and [he was] having a hard time
breathing."
"I managed to get the deflate mechanism activated and the
raft started to deflate. By this time the cop was breathing again
and somewhat coherent. He came over and told me that was the
funniest thing he had ever seen. I asked if I was going to get a
ticket? He said no, he just wanted to make sure no one got
hurt."
The hardest part for Jerry was convincing his insurance
company that all that glass damage had happened because of a life
raft inflating in the back seat of the car.
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WRITE NOW DEPARTMENT ---
"Years ago a friend was driving his late '60s muscle car on
a turnpike at about 100 MPH. Soon an officer was sternly asking,
"License and registration."
"Several minutes later he returned with a written warning
for driving 100 in a 65 zone.
"The offender said, "Not to be disrespectful, but how do you
decide when to give a ticket and when to give a written warning?"
"The officer stated, "It depends on ... the nature of the
offense... the condition of the road ... the weather ... the
attitude of the offender ... or, in this case, I'm out of
tickets."
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SMALL MISTAKES DEPARTMENT...
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During Christmas break one year, a college student from
Massachusetts asked his father for permission to use the family
car to attend a fraternity party across the state line in
Vermont. His father reluctantly gave permission, but only on
condition that the son wouldn't have anything to drink,
especially because the son was less than 21, the legal drinking
age in Vermont.
Needless to say, the son did drink, and far too much (you
don't think there'd be a story here if he didn't, right?). On
the way back, just before getting back into Massachusetts, the
son saw that the road was blocked and the police were checking
all drivers to see if they were driving while drunk. Oops!
But here the son got very lucky. The police asked him to
get out of the car, and wait at the side of the road with the
other drivers. While the other drivers were trying to walk a
straight line and proving that they could touch the tip of their
nose, the son kind of stayed in the background, and the police
somehow missed checking him before letting him go.
When the father answered the door at 7AM the next morning,
there were two police officers there, one from Massachusetts and
one from Vermont. They asked the father if he owned a
[description of car] and had he been driving last night. Well,
the father replied, he did own the car, but his son had been
driving last night.
When the son came into the room - still somewhat hung over -
the boy knew he was in trouble. But he couldn't remember much
about the ride home after the checkpoint. Had he hit something
on the way home?
No, the officers replied, they just wanted to see the car he
had driven home in. The son was pretty relieved, since he hadn't
hit anything, he couldn't be in too much trouble. And by this
time, there wouldn't be much alcohol in his blood, so the police
wouldn't be able to prove drunk driving. So the son led them out
to the car port.
Sitting there on the car port was a Vermont State Police
car, with its red lights still flashing...
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